Judgment Before Blessing

First the Lord must cleanse the land of all its defilement and remove from it in judgment all those who have rejected Him and followed a false Christ. He sends a desolator through the land and scrubs the land clean. He has to take out of His land all that defiles. He can't bring His people into blessing and He can't bring Jerusalem into blessing with all the pollution and abominations in the land.
When the Lord was cast out we know Pilate was there; we know Herod was there; we know the Jewish leaders were there, but they were all against Christ. Men of like character are going to be there again, but what is He going to do? He takes before His eye the ones that we know of as the beast and the false prophet and says: I'm going to remove them in judgment from My land first. And He does that.
We see some of these events in Daniel, but remember Daniel couldn't see all the way to the end. If you go to the last chapter of Daniel, you find that there was much yet to be done, beyond what Daniel could see, beyond what we call the seventieth week of Daniel. Daniel's vision ends with, "Thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book," and, "Blessed is he that waiteth." We must look to other prophets to see how the people are delivered from their final enemies and made the center of blessing for the whole earth.